Shaping of interval timing behavior by the peak procedure and response temporal distribution

Two experiments examined interval timing behavior in mice and rats. In the first experiment, subjectswere mice, and in the second one they were rats. The animals were trained using the peak procedure that was avariant of a discrete trial fixed interval (DT-FI) schedule. On food trails, the first lever press response more than30-s after tone stimulus onset terminated the stimulus and presented a food pellet. On empty trials, the tonestimulus lasted for 90-s with no food. The temporal distributions of responses in mice and rats were calculatedby averaging responses over 180 empty trials. Training progressed in both animals in a way similar to Gaussianfunction curve. Peak time, which shows the peak of regression curve fitting the Gaussian function, correspondedto 30-s with wide variability in both experiments. This proved to be a good index to the interval timing behavior.In the second experiment, we considered various regression fitting variables, especially concerning the numberof trials. Temporal distribution seems to be affected by various factors including individual differences intraining sessions

A case of strangulated ileus caused by internal hernia through a defect in the broad ligament of the uterus

A 41-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital because of lower abdominal pain. She had no history of laparotomy. An abdominal CT scan at the time of admission indicated closed-loop intestinal obstruction of the small intestine within the pelvis and deviation of the uterus to the right. We diagnosed this as a strangulated internal hernia and decided to conduct an emergency operation. The ileum had herniated through a defect in the broad ligament of the uterus. The strangulated intestinal loop, which was about 25cm long, was released, and the defect of the broad ligament was closed. The postoperative course was uneventful. The differential diagnosis of intestinal obstruction should include internal hernia, especially in the absence of a previous laparotomy. An abdominal CT scan is quite useful for the preoperative and prompt diagnosis of internal hernia through a defect in the broad ligament of the uterus

Hot Electron Spectra in Plain, Cone and Integrated Targets for FIREX-I using Electron Spectrometer

The traditional fast ignition scheme is that a compressed core created by an imploding laser is auxiliary heated and ignited by the hot electrons (produced by a short pulse laser guided through the cone). Here, the most suitable target design for fast ignition can be searched for by comparison of the spectra between varied targets using an electron spectrometer

The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection

Assessment of reduction in quantitative pulmonary blood flow using O-15-labeled water PET in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension 1

OBJECTIVES: Elevated pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) induces pulmonary artery remodeling and may have an impact on lung perfusion in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). Quantitative pulmonary blood flow (PBF) evaluation may be a sensitive approach to assessing pulmonary perfusion abnormality. However, this approach has not been studied in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Using O-15-labeled water PET, we sought to evaluate whether there was a difference in lung perfusion between the two subgroups with PH. METHODS: Twenty-seven patients with WHO functional class II or III due to 16 PAH or 11 CTEPH and 7 controls prospectively underwent dynamic O-15-labeled water PET at rest. All CTEPH patients showed multiple perfusion defects in both lungs according to a Tc-99m macroaggregated human serum albumin lung scan. Dynamic O-15 water PET was used to simultaneously measure bilateral PBF and myocardial blood flow (MBF). The input function was obtained from the right ventricle (RV) cavity. Regions of interest were created on bilateral lung using transmission scan data.RESULTS: The mean PAP (mPAP) associated with both CTEPH and PAH was similar (CTEPH 36.7±11.6 mmHg vs. PAH 42.3±14.4 mmHg, P=0.30). There was no significant difference in whole left ventricular (LV) MBF among the CTEPH, PAH and controls (CTEPH 0.87±0.24 mL/g/min, PAH 0.84±0.18 mL/g/min vs. control 0.76±0.11 mL/g/min, P=0.71). CTEPH patients showed significantly lower left PBF compared to that in either PAH (180.5±27.2 mL/100mL of lung/min vs. 225.6±41.0 mL/ 100mL of lung/min, P=0.0043) or control (180.5±27.2 mL/100mL of lung/min vs. 224.7±42.6 mL/ 100mL of lung/min, P=0.020). In contrast, PAH showed similar PBF compared to that of control (P=0.96). Similarly, CTEPH showed reduced right PBF compared to that of PAH (131.9±27.2 mL/100mL of lung/min vs. 168.5±32.7 mL/ 100mL of lung/min, P=0.0029) and controls (131.9±27.2 mL/100mL of lung/min vs. 166.1±29.0 mL/ 100mL of lung/min, P=0.020). There was also no significant difference in right PBF between the PAH and control (P=0.86). Whole lung PBF did not correlate with mPAP (R=0.09, P=0.67). CONCLUSION: CTEPH patients showed preserved rest MBF similar to that of PAH patients. In contrast, bilateral PBF of CTEPH patients was reduced in comparison with that of PAH patients. Even with similar mPAP, CTEPH patients had significantly lower bilateral PBF than did PAH patients. Given the recent successes of catheter-based or surgical revascularization for CTEPH, quantitative PBF assessment using O-15-labeled-water PET may also be useful in evaluating emerging medical and invasive revascularization treatments for CTEPH.63rd Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging( 第63回米国核医学・分子イメージング学会学術集会

Heat and Mass Transfer during Lignocellulosic Biomass Torrefaction: Contributions from the Major Components—Cellulose, Hemicellulose, and Lignin

The torrefaction of three representative types of biomass—bamboo, and Douglas fir and its bark—was carried out in a cylindrical-shaped packed bed reactor under nitrogen flow at 573 K of the reactor wall temperature. As the thermal energy for the torrefaction was supplied from the top and the side of the bed, the propagation of the temperature profile of the bed is a crucial factor for discussing and improving the torrefaction reactor performance. Therefore, the temperature and gas flow rate (vector) profiles throughout the bed were calculated by model simulation so as to scrutinize this point. The measured temperature at a certain representative location (z = 30 mm and r = 38 mm) of the bed was well reproduced by the simulation. The volume faction of the bed at temperatures higher than 500 K at 75 min was 0.89, 0.85, and 0.99 for bamboo, and Douglas fir and its bark, respectively. It was found that the effective thermal conductivity is the determining factor for this difference. The heat of the reactions was found to be insignificant